


warm blood

by stutteringpeach



Series: warm blood [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, post 8x03, yet another post-battle fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 15:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18672844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutteringpeach/pseuds/stutteringpeach
Summary: He places his lips to the bruise blooming on her neck, his fingertips tracing Sansa’s neat stitches on her forehead. Her hands are cool on his skin as she presses her palm against his broken ribs.‘You belong with me,’ she whispers, lips ghosting along his jaw.‘You don’t belong with anyone,’ he murmurs as she slants her mouth over his.





	warm blood

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, it's another post-battle fic.

He searches for her after the battle, wading through the bones and rotting flesh, his heart hammering in his ears when his trembling hands find her dragonglass staff, shattered and forgotten on the battlements. Fear curls an icy hand around his throat, threatening to squeeze the air from his lungs. But he hears the shouts from below, sees her clutching Bran’s hand as Jon pushes the chair into the small space in the courtyard that isn’t littered with bodies. He sees Lady Stark rush towards them and _the pack survives._ He pushes his way through the corpses but Davos finds him first, his face grim as he says, ‘No solider, but a fighter indeed.’ They are filthy, all of them, stinking of shit and blood and piss but they are alive.

Arya stands back from her brothers and sister and her eyes flit to the walls. He knows she sees him but he does not go to her. She is impossible, improbable. She is a scrap of a thing, no taller than she was at ten-and-three. He knows the jerkin she wears hides wiry muscles, that she is built for quickness, that her hands are deft with a knife. Somehow, she has managed to survive the slaughter of her family, kidnap, rapers, murderers. Now she can add the dead to her list.

* * *

It takes her two days to come to him. He is distracted by counting weapons. Those still alive had spent the first day after the dawn picking through the lifeless corpses and decayed flesh collecting swords and armour and piling up bodies to be burnt. The Great War had been won, the army of the dead defeated, but a living, breathing threat was waiting for them in the South. They needed weapons, but hell, they needed bodies to wield them.

‘You’re alive, then.’

He does not see her enter but suddenly she is there, solid flesh in front of him. Always so bloody quiet. That’s how she killed the Night King, he supposes. The other smiths in the forge have always been unnerved by her presence. The forge is no place for a lady, even one who wears leathers instead of a gown and whose posy is made of knives. Now he hears their whispers, the little wolf who ended the long night, who killed death itself and she is already becoming a myth, a lullaby to be sung to fussing babes. But he knows better. She may be a weapon but she is also a girl. His mind flickers to a stuttered gasp, soft fingers clasping his shoulders, silk thighs tightening-

‘Just about,’ he replies. His hands still over the shards of dragonglass and clench into fists. Her face is bruised, brown blood crusting above her brow but she is clean, dressed in simple trousers and a jerkin, cleaner than he who has only had time to scrape the blood and dirt from his skin in his exhaustion. But she is a Lady of Winterfell and for her there will be a featherbed and hot baths and people to close her wounds.

He can feel the distance between them suddenly gaping and sharp, threatening to swallow him whole. _But everything is different now_ , he thinks. _The dead have risen and fallen and everything can be different._ It was different two nights ago, but that was when they were dying and now they are alive. He aches to touch her, to prove that it wasn’t a dream brought on by the threat of his inevitable death, but he holds himself still. The lady doesn’t belong to the bastard.

‘Arya, I-’ he starts, but her lord brother is there now sweeping past her, flanked by Davos and the Kingslayer, come to take stock of the remaining weapons and make plans for what they lack. He looks past them to see if she has lingered, but she has gone.

* * *

The Great Hall is teeming with people. The night is as rowdy as men who are half-starved, wounded and mourning can be. Had more survived, the feast would be spilling out into the courtyard, the fires alight, Winterfell’s stores drunk dry.

Gendry sits with Tormund, drinking ale from a flagon and pretending to keep an ear on the conversation. They had burned the dead that morning. It had taken hours, even with pitch and dragon fire. The smell of burning hair and flesh stained their clothes, permeating the walls of the castle, a reminder that despite their feasting and celebration, despite how desperately they scrubbed their raw, bleeding skin the horror of the last day will forever be etched onto their memory. _The North remembers._

Tormund makes a joke and the table roars with laughter. The wilding claps him on the back and looks at him expectantly, startling him from his thoughts. Tormund eyes him, his laughter dying as he sees Gendry’s expression. He knows. There is a bond formed between men who fight next to each other, who fortify themselves on a pile of the dead. They will share the horror of that night forever, an unspoken thing with gaping eyes and torn flesh.

Arya arrives late to the feast, stealing in at the back and settling herself down beside the Hound before her sister can acknowledge her. She supps quietly, drinking her ale and occasionally murmuring to the man next to her. She is dwarfed by the Hound and he wonders what could have happened between them for her to choose the seat next to him over the table with her siblings. Her eyes lift as if she knows he is watching and he is caught in her gaze, the hammer meeting steel. She brings a piece of bread to her mouth and takes a sip from her cup, her pink tongue darting out to catch a drip lingering on her lips. One dark brow quirks up and she is looking at him just as she did two nights ago when she brought him that challenge, _we’re probably going to die soon_ and _shame,_ he feels himself grow hot. 

He jerks his head away and forces his gaze to the head of the hall, where the dragon queen sits, surveying the room, her cup of wine halfway to her lips. Her faint smile falters and he follows her line of sight to Lord Snow who has forgone the head table, instead choosing to sit with Davos and Samwell Tarly. Lady Sansa is as stoic as always next to the silver queen, but the fire in her eyes has dimmed to a warm glow. Bran Stark, dressed in his usual heavy furs is quiet in his chair next to his sister, his gaze unseeing, fixed on some unknown sight. What is it that he sees? The past? The future? _Did he know how it would end when he gave Arya that blade?_

He looks up and she’s gone, slipped out of the hall like a whisper. No one has seen her go. No one has noticed that she’s disappeared from the table. If he hadn’t seen the slip of a shadow disappearing down the lighted corridor he would have wondered if she’d even been there at all.

He is torn between following her and staying put. She is a lady for Gods’ sake, this is her home and it’s a fucking castle. Bastard boys shouldn’t be wandering round castles following ladies. But that’s not the issue now, is it? She’d demonstrated she didn’t care about her title when she’d pushed him down onto the sacking and stripped off her clothes with hurried hands. She didn’t care about her title when she climbed on top of him, and pressed her mouth to his neck.

But now she’s not just a lady, she’s the Little Wolf, the Assassin, Slayer of the Long Night, _the Saviour of the Seven fucking Kingdoms_. Maesters will write histories about her, she’ll have her likeness carved into stone. She will belong to the legends, the stories and songs.

He lurches from his seat, suddenly uncomfortable with the room; it feels too close, too hot, too loud. How can they be celebrating when so many are dead? He gives some excuse about going for a piss but isn’t sure if anyone heard him, if anyone cares.

He finds her in the library, her bruised hands skimming over dusty spines of books long since read. She doesn’t turn at his footsteps.

‘Took you long enough,’ she lilts, turning to disappear behind one of the rows of books.

He takes her right there, up against the stacked shelves. She gasps, shuddering around him, her tongue hot in his mouth. She is impossibly close, everywhere.

* * *

‘Why didn’t you come to me earlier?’ she asks him when they are alone in her chambers. She is naked and shivers when he walks his fingers down her spine.

‘Wasn’t sure I’d be welcome,’ he says. She frowns at him.

‘And why is that?’

He doesn’t answer her. _Because of who I am. Because of who you are._

'Where were you, before you came home?’ He feels her body stiffen at his question. She doesn’t answer for a long time, and when she finally turns to him her eyes are guarded.

‘Braavos.’

‘And that is where you learnt to fight?’

‘And other things.’

She tells him stories of stealing faces, whispering beneath the furs as if she is frightened someone will hear her. It is worse than he imagined, terrible and monstrous. He knows his horror is reflected on his face when her mouth sets in a hard line and her eyes grow fierce.

‘I’m not a weapon, Gendry,’ she murmurs as she rolls on top of him, breasts soft against his chest, hand slipping down to grasp him. ‘It is a part of me. But it is just one face. Not the true one.’

* * *

 

‘Where will you go?’ he asks later.

‘I’ve always wondered what is west of Westeros. Maybe we can get on a ship, sail away.’

‘And what will I be? Your lover? Or your smith?’

Her eyes narrow. ’I didn’t think you were a coward,’ she retorts, and it is a challenge and a question all at once. She is the wolf, untamed and wild, roaming free. Doesn’t she know that wolves hunt stags?

He places his lips to the bruise blooming on her neck, his fingertips tracing Sansa’s neat stitches on her forehead. Her hands are cool on his skin as she presses her palm against his broken ribs.

‘You belong with me,’ she whispers, lips ghosting along his jaw.

‘You don’t belong with anyone,’ he murmurs as she slants her mouth over his.


End file.
